Nonfiction Mattershttp://blogs.slj.com/nonfictionmatters
A School Library Journal BlogFri, 01 Jun 2012 09:57:10 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.10Time Delay and Convergencehttp://blogs.slj.com/nonfictionmatters/2012/06/01/time-delay-and-convergence/
http://blogs.slj.com/nonfictionmatters/2012/06/01/time-delay-and-convergence/#commentsFri, 01 Jun 2012 09:57:10 +0000http://blogs.slj.com/nonfictionmatters/?p=1455I had hoped to have the details on my column up by today but that will have to wait until next week. Until then, I hope to see some of you at the SLJ Day of Dialog on Monday, at BEA during the week, or at ALA or ISTE later in the month. That set of meetings gets at the overlaping worlds so many of us face: Common Core, digital technology, books, libraries, schools. Throw in the invitation I recently got from Biography Channel to be a talking head on a couple of their minibios and you have print, digital, broadcast in both educational and commercial spaces begging, borrowing, and stealing from one another. Today, for example, Myra, Mary Ann, Sue Bartle and I are working on Common Core issues together — which will doubtless lead to new webinars, perhaps films, workshops, databases, even as new companies are starting to nose around to ask about app rights to books.

I feel all of my interests converging: It seems like what one could imagine six months ago are a set of seminars and business propositions now. It is not at all clear where all of this will lead — will we all be making apps in another six months, or will we be back to books while apps turn into something so different it has little to do with us? What will happen in fall in those states where the 2013 end of year tests are based on Common Core? Will trade book houses finally agree to digital editions of nonfiction, or will we be left outside of the party? By next week I should know one thing — what my perch for commenting on all this will be called and how to find it.

See you then.

]]>http://blogs.slj.com/nonfictionmatters/2012/06/01/time-delay-and-convergence/feed/1Change Partners and Dancehttp://blogs.slj.com/nonfictionmatters/2012/05/28/change-partners-and-dance/
http://blogs.slj.com/nonfictionmatters/2012/05/28/change-partners-and-dance/#commentsMon, 28 May 2012 15:43:25 +0000http://blogs.slj.com/nonfictionmatters/?p=1453Fred Astaire sings this lyric to Ginger Rogers in the 1938 film “Carefree,” so my quick search of Youtube tells me. I’m borrowing the irving Berlin lyric to announce my own change — and ongoing dance. This will be my second to last post in Nonfiction Matters. Starting in June I’ll be writing a column two or so a month for the SLJ site, as well as articles for the site and the magazine. If something really big happens that needs a quick response, I will be able to get that up to the site right away. But the main shift is that I have a bit more time to writer longer, say more, and add a depth of research and planning to what I say. I may continue to blog in these short takes, but that would be on my own website www.marcaronson.com I’ll announce that for sure later this week.

The column will deal with some familiar subjects — Common Core, more generally education, nonfiction, the connection between issues of the day and our books, and our challenges in working with young people. And I hope to explore some new territory.

Here’s one avenue I am considering: In the Hemingway biography I mentioned the other day, the author included excerpts from two very different reviews of the Sun Also Rises — Conrad Aiken’s approving review, Alan Tate’s critical reception. This was not one of those “see how they got it wrong” gotcha segments. Instead both reviews were slow, considerate, deeply engaged. Both critics read carefully and attempted to understand what Hemingway was doing, and whether or not he achieved it. Instead of seeing whether he met a set of checkoffs, they tried to meet him in his ambition, to understand how he was trying to use art to change the nature of the novel. It is precisely that depth of response that our nonfiction never gets — the first notices, star or no star, summarize, approve, disapprove as a guide to the librarian. In effect the real review takes place after she buys the book — as it sits on the shelf and young readers, teachers, parents do or do not come to it. I have hesitated to review books, in part because I am a writer and feel a sense of collegial bond with other writers, in part because I never want to be in the position of judging a book that might be in competition with one of mine. But there is a value in exemplars — in examining books that have ambition, and in that process definining what we do, how it can improve, and where it is breaking ground. Is that something you would like to see? Perhaps I might then invite the author or another reader to give a differing view.

I am not quite sure what the column will be called — any ideas? — nor everything I will discuss. But it all starts in June. So see you all back here one last time Wednesday, and I’ll give you the switch over info for the first column which will follow very soon thereafter.

]]>http://blogs.slj.com/nonfictionmatters/2012/05/28/change-partners-and-dance/feed/1“Objectivity Is Not Neutrality,” Or, the Problem of Lag Timehttp://blogs.slj.com/nonfictionmatters/2012/05/24/objectivity-is-not-neutrality-or-the-problem-of-lag-time/
http://blogs.slj.com/nonfictionmatters/2012/05/24/objectivity-is-not-neutrality-or-the-problem-of-lag-time/#respondThu, 24 May 2012 15:12:04 +0000http://blogs.slj.com/nonfictionmatters/?p=1451I’ve noticed a pattern often enough to now propose it as a theory: discussions that take place in the academy — in the debates among experts in papers and conferences which then form into competing “schools” of thought carried forward by graduate students — reach the world of K-12 books in about twenty years. Perhaps that is about as long as it takes for a highly abstract set of contentions to filter through the professions, the ed schools, the classrooms, to become a set of criteria in evaluating the books written for our readers. The latest proof of this is a marvelous paper that I first read in graduate school and returned to as I think of how to discuss the Common Core focus on “point of view” with teachers, librarians, and students. In 1988 a well-known historian named Peter Novick published That Noble Dream — a survey of the history of historians in America that was a kind of expose, showing that experts who claimed to be so objective and above the fray actually had strong prejudices and political views that shaped their view of the past. But Novick was not merely listing instances of discordance between what a historian said he was doing and what his private notes revealed. He claimed that the whole idea of historians aiming for objectivity was either false or misguided. Two years late Thomas Haskell, himself a fine historian, wrote a spectacular review essay titled “Objectivity Is Not Neutrality” that took issue with Novick. That essay, which I urge you to read, explains everything about the Common Core approach to IT (informational texts). Here it is: http://tinyurl.com/bqaxj5f

Novick demonstrates (in all of the right ways, using evidence, reason, logic, as well as personal passion) that historians were not neutral on subjects they studied, and in cases also not objective (bending facts, ignoring evidence, etc). Haskell says, sure, we are human. We are limited. But there is something we can aspire to — a level of “detachment” in which we do our best to investigate and understand views that differ from or even are opposed to ours. The fact that we do this does not mean we are without passion. Our motivation to fully grasp a different view may be to demolish it. But even if that is what inspires us to look at new evidence or consider differing interpretations, we have to take that step. And, indeed, the more fully we step into the shoes of a different historian with a different perspective, the stronger our work will be. We are passionate human beings who can do our best to be fair and honest investigators of the past.

How does this approach differ from what IT books for our readers have always done? Haskell makes that clear, “I see nothing to admire in neutrality.” He sees no special value in “standing in the middle of the road.” This is not the world of the bland textbook. This is not the false balance of One from This Side and One from That Side. This is a world where the best most “powerful argument” wins. And what gives an argument power? The fact that you have weighed your side and the other side(s), you have tried to see the story from a totally different view, and have accounted for it. But then, you have brought forth your evidence. As Haskell so perfectly put it back in 1990, “the demand is for detachment and fairness, not disengagement from life.”

And so friends that is it — CC has put us, in 2012, into the debates of the late 80s, and has given us a guide in this wonderful essay. I hope it is useful for you.

]]>http://blogs.slj.com/nonfictionmatters/2012/05/24/objectivity-is-not-neutrality-or-the-problem-of-lag-time/feed/0Big Data? Big Questions — Reading Fast and Slow, Private and Publichttp://blogs.slj.com/nonfictionmatters/2012/05/22/big-data-big-questions-reading-fast-and-slow-private-and-public/
http://blogs.slj.com/nonfictionmatters/2012/05/22/big-data-big-questions-reading-fast-and-slow-private-and-public/#respondTue, 22 May 2012 23:44:04 +0000http://blogs.slj.com/nonfictionmatters/?p=1447I had the chance to attend a Tools of Change seminar on Big Data. The excellent main speaker was from bitly — and I learned a great deal just from who she is and what her company does. From time to time I provide links here, and those links are often in the form of a shortened url, not the long url from the original article or post. I do that through bitly, https://bitly.com/. It turns out their game is to provide that neat free service, but then they can track every link thus provided — and since their tools are embedded in many other search tools, they harvest and can study vast amounts of immediate information. Their real business, then, is asking the questions that can make useful sense of the vast amounts of data they gather. What they do is a perfect example of the public private middle space — actions we think of as personal (and formerly private, such as deciding to read an article, click on an image, buy something, check out the time a movie shows, or, even, highlight a passage in a digital book, linger on a passage in a digital book, or put down that book), are now part of the public data stream.

This sticky middle space of personal (formerly individual and private) now collective, shared, public transaction data is itself creating new fields, such as social reading. https://www.readsocial.net/ Read social creates groups in which comments you make, whether underlining individual words or remarking on whole paragraphs, are shared socially. Some might see reading as the most private, interior, and personal act. In this new world software gives you the chance to make it an immediately social experience — and this can, via school classes, go down into teenage. I asked my 11 year old what he thought of all this. He liked knowing what other people were liking. He did not like others knowing what he found worthy of comment. The social personal — that is what Big Data gathers, since so many tools can map the choices on the net that we think of as private and free.

There are obviously privacy concerns here, concerns about how we are seeing reading (though reading has been collective at other times in its history, indeed one debate among historians of reading is exactly when reading shifted from being primarily oral to primarily silent), and concerns about overvaluing the now. I kept thinking that great books convince you to like them — you don’t know you will, so no trends will help publishers. Only the book itself wins you and changes/informs your taste. But I also question how useful up to the second trends are for books that cook slowly. Perhaps we need to talk about fast digital reading experiences and slow print reading experiences. Perhaps we need a slow reading movement to parallel slow food. Learning more about marketing is good — if it matches the markets for books.

Big data, big questions.

]]>http://blogs.slj.com/nonfictionmatters/2012/05/22/big-data-big-questions-reading-fast-and-slow-private-and-public/feed/0Another Meaning of the “Common” in Common Corehttp://blogs.slj.com/nonfictionmatters/2012/05/19/another-meaning-of-the-common-in-common-core/
http://blogs.slj.com/nonfictionmatters/2012/05/19/another-meaning-of-the-common-in-common-core/#commentsSat, 19 May 2012 14:14:25 +0000http://blogs.slj.com/nonfictionmatters/?p=1445Whenever Myra, Mary Ann and I talk about CC we stress the third “c,” collaboration — meaning librarians working with teachers and administrators. But I just read a review of a new book that made me think of the idea of “commonality” in a different way. Mark Peterson’s book Galileo’s Muse is a new general interest academic title (I just ordered it so cannot yet comment on style) that argues that a key to understanding the Renaissance is in seeing the way mathematics — more than science — permeated all thought — music, painting, sculpture as much as astronomy, physics, philosophy. I can’t wait to see how he makes his case. But it made me think about CC — what if when we teach kids about the Renaissance that linked with lessons in the kinds of math they were developing and understanding: math would no longer be a set of skills and tests, it would also be an exploration of a moment in the development of mind and culture.

It does not take much to see that CC encourages this kind of cross-disciplinary thinking: ELA teachers will be reading NF a good deal of the time, so the most natural step is for them to be coordinating with content area teachers. The broadly humanistic approach comes up in many CC discussions. But rarely for math. Some years ago Rosen began a series that explored the math of various cultures as expressed in the buildings and art. I was thrilled to see those books — series publishing at its best in that the idea, the concept, was so fresh, and not something that would have worked well in single hardcover books. I did not find the invidual books as successful as the concept, and not sure it is still going. But it did point the way to a kind of commonality, a place of overlap, we don’t usually explore.

What if we were to expand this even further — what is NF (or IT) but everything about the world? PE should overlap with physics and math in sports science — play a game in PE, gather some data from what the class just did, make that the substance of math and science lessons for the day. The cross PE with history — measure people in the class, then using archaeology determine size of people at some other time, try to fiture out energy expended in their days to get food, or heat, or warmth. Opening the door to more IT means opening the door to every way of thinking, gathering information, and making sense of it — it is not yet another walk through the textbook same old same old.

]]>http://blogs.slj.com/nonfictionmatters/2012/05/19/another-meaning-of-the-common-in-common-core/feed/2YA Biography — How Does it Differ From Adult Biography?http://blogs.slj.com/nonfictionmatters/2012/05/18/ya-biography-how-does-it-differ-from-adult-biography/
http://blogs.slj.com/nonfictionmatters/2012/05/18/ya-biography-how-does-it-differ-from-adult-biography/#commentsFri, 18 May 2012 10:38:02 +0000http://blogs.slj.com/nonfictionmatters/?p=1443I am reading Kennethy Lynn’s excellent biogrpahy of Hemingway, not so very long after having made my way through almost all of the existing biographies of J. Edgar Hoover. I am reading the book in two ways: as a book on Hemingway, and as a way to see what adult biography is, and how it differs from what I write for middle grade and YA. It is is easy to see why Lynn’s 1987 book was a pathbreaker. The Hemingway he finds is neither the old hero of Lost Generation masculinity nor the fraud of family and feminist exposure. Lynn has weighed both, and moves past to find –in the evidence from his life and close reading of his work — a figure who combines the suffocating, castrating effect of his mother and the hardy, outdoor, hardworking dad. And in his best work, Hemingway finds perfect expression of this combination of vulnerability and independent strength. A fine book. And yet clearly not what we do.

Here is the key difference: Lynn assumes his readers know Hemingway. He is writing to an audience that already has an image of Hemingway in its mind, has doubtless read much of his fiction, is aware of controversies, knows the players in the pro- and anti- Papa sweepstakes. And now he is going to be the knight, the hero, picking his way through this charged field, settling old debates, gathering the evidence, making it all clear. He is the guide to a field of battle his readers have already visited. We are the opposite, we are bringing people to the site for the first time. That creates a different sort of challenge — we cannot presume knowledge or interest. In one way that means we can skip one issue or another (for example, I didn’t write in any detail on Alger Hiss). Our readers are not coming to us for the latest, greatest, view on every issue around the figure we discuss. But in another, it means we are always looking in two directions — back to the life and times we need to understand, and out to our reader to connect, to make that matter.

In a way, our books are an excercise in judgment — while an adult biographer knows what to cover: everything, we have to select that part of the story of that life that is significant, compelling, engaging, moving, challenging, for our readers. This gets back to my point about art. We have to piece together the package of text, context, images, pacing, design, structure (where to begin, how to move through the life) that will engage, stimulate, and inform the reader. While this is similar to those Brief Lives that are being written for adults, it is fundamentally different from the standard adult biography. Where the key word for the adult biographer might be coverage, depth, or completeness, for us it is selection, evocation, engagement. So in the cluster model, might be nice to compare biographies, to see what each author has selected — and why.

]]>http://blogs.slj.com/nonfictionmatters/2012/05/18/ya-biography-how-does-it-differ-from-adult-biography/feed/2CC Change and Challengehttp://blogs.slj.com/nonfictionmatters/2012/05/16/cc-change-and-challenge/
http://blogs.slj.com/nonfictionmatters/2012/05/16/cc-change-and-challenge/#commentsWed, 16 May 2012 10:56:30 +0000http://blogs.slj.com/nonfictionmatters/?p=1441By the time you get around to reading this, all of you will have noticed that David Coleman is leaving the Common Core effort to become the new head of the College Board: http://tinyurl.com/d4qfxry
The Times article is interesting in that it brings up two kinds of objections to CC: from Texas in the name of regionalism and community values. I think we can leave that alone, both because Texas is Texas and because, as I discovered at TLA their own Lone Star version of CC is pretty much CC. Now doubtless that will change when the Science and Social Studies standards become available. But from what I hear Texas will hardly be the only state to steer away from those political battles. The second objection is that the real root of gaps in school achievement is poverty. Now I agree that there is a great deal to be said for that. And you can even make a compelling argument that by spending so much energy and $ on CC, as if that were the answer, we disguise or distract from the issues we really need to face — poverty. And yet I also disagree. Because the students most harmed by not knowing how to read NF or Informational Text, as CC has it) are those who need it most.

Awash in the distractions of popular culture, and encouraged by a previous school focus on personal response to focus on their own interior emotions, the students who were not introduced to evidence, argument, and debate at home were all the more unprepared for life after school. Now I might argue that sports had long provided a universe in which evidence, stats, and intelligent argument were important (as I wrote here some time ago, if you want to understand a subset of boys in your libraries, listen to sports talk radio). But schools rarely make use of that passionate mindset. So providing a structure in school for all students to look at evidence, analyze argument, and see themselves as detectives, scientists, crusading historians is a good idea.

But that brings me back to a key challenge everyone who reads this needs to think about: we know there are great NF books that serve the CC — well written and designed, filled with apt, carefully selected images, texts that take students on journeys of discovery. But teachers don’t know them and cannot use them. Publishers reluctance to make NF available to schools in digital or paperback formats, or via something like rental, is a real roadblock. If you see a publisher, make the case — that is one thing I will be doing at BEA.

]]>http://blogs.slj.com/nonfictionmatters/2012/05/16/cc-change-and-challenge/feed/1Legal Implicationshttp://blogs.slj.com/nonfictionmatters/2012/05/14/legal-implications/
http://blogs.slj.com/nonfictionmatters/2012/05/14/legal-implications/#respondMon, 14 May 2012 12:03:16 +0000http://blogs.slj.com/nonfictionmatters/?p=1438I was standing on line waiting to appear at the Rutgers Graduation yesterday when my colleague professor Nancy Kranich began discussing a legal ruling that had just been handed down: 3 publishers against Georgia State University: http://chronicle.com/article/Long-Awaited-Ruling-in/131859/ That article explains the case and the ruling, and if you click through at the very end of the article, you reach this more detailed analysis: http://laboratorium.net/archive/2012/05/13/inside_the_georgia_state_opinion. As I understand it, the publishers claimed the college had allowed too much copying of their materials, while the college claimed the use of the materials fell within “fair use.” The big issues in the trial, then, were “what is fair use.” Though, as in all things legal, that large question was parsed into specific and smaller questions. The general consensus is that the ruling favored the college/library in about 90% of the issues, and beyond that created a more clear cut structure for what constitutes “fair use.”

Now speaking here as an author of nonfiction, I have some concerns about materials I have crafted being shared with classes for free, just because a teacher is allowed to do so. And yet what caught my eye in this case was something else. If I am reading Professor Grimmelman’s piece correctly, copyrighted works are protected (or more protected) in as much as they have been licensed for digital use — though this morning I see a last paragraph that says that book length single author works that are not work-for-hire do not require that license. My first thought on reading the licensing requirement is that this fits perfectly with my desire to see K-12 NF in digital format, so that teachers can license the use of individual chapters and sections. If the effect of this ruling is that publishers become more diligent about digital licensing, that is great. If this ruling has little to do with those of us who write single author royalty contract books, then I am more of a bemused bystander — with this exception.

I often think that those of us who write, design, and select art in NF for younger readers are ignored. We are not the big textbook houses fighting to control product. We are not the library systems fighting for fair use access. We are artisans crafting works designed to share ideas and information with younger readers. We pay permissions fees greatly out of scale with our market, and yet may be swamped by intellectual property rulings aimed at very different kinds of authors. We need a voice — and I hope some day to meet Dr. Grimmelman and others like him, to find out where and how we can be heard.

]]>http://blogs.slj.com/nonfictionmatters/2012/05/14/legal-implications/feed/0The Famous “Appendix B,” Exemplars, and Short Textshttp://blogs.slj.com/nonfictionmatters/2012/05/11/the-famous-appendix-b-exemplars-and-short-texts/
http://blogs.slj.com/nonfictionmatters/2012/05/11/the-famous-appendix-b-exemplars-and-short-texts/#commentsFri, 11 May 2012 10:55:55 +0000http://blogs.slj.com/nonfictionmatters/?p=1436If, like me, you have become all too familiar with the Common Core standards, you have found your way to “Appendix B,” the list of IT (informational text) titles that are provided into sections, K-5, and 6-12. You are also certainly aware of the apparent focus on “short texts” that I have discussed here previously. Well I had the good fortune of speaking with an astute librarian who played an important role in developing Appendix B, and I realized that how many of us see it — and, indeed, how the scrambling world of teachers, librarians, and publishers see it — is limited and misguided.

First, the list was created some 3 years ago, so it is inherently dated. Many of us noticed that, but not the simple reason for it — it was crafted as the CC was being developed, but while the standards are evergreen, the books are not (or not necessarily). The creators of the list were well aware of its limitations, but they saw the books as “exemplars” — instances of kinds of books that could support the CC, engage students, and work well in classrooms. They arrived at that determination by working with some 40 year classroom teachers in the age ranges who reported on books that had worked well for them — limited by (and this is beyond belief) those books publishers were willing to provide (that is, some refused to let their books be tested and used in the program, thus excluding them from Appendix B). This is a commendable process, but since the testing structure is no longer in place, it cannot be updated.

My thought is that we should create a new list around a different principle: more about less (which is very CC). Why not select a smaller list of exemplars and then have teachers, librarians, CC designers explain what it is about that book which makes it work — and thus extract guiding principles which teachers and librarians can use in evaluating other texts? The listed books then really do function as examples, not as (as it is easy to picture today) a cannonically approved and limited list.

Short text: it turns out that the carefully scaffolded short text exemplars are classroom strategies — showing how the CC focus on increasing text complexity can function in heterogeneous classrooms with differing reading abilities. In a sense it it is a way to jump over the Lexile divide. It does not replace books with passages. It shows, in some detail, how a passage can be handled.

Friends, neighbors, countryfolk: we have work to do in translating what CC really says about IT books and spreading the word. I know for a fact that publishers are in two modes — rushing around to rebrand everything as CC, or doing absolutely nothing. The first will flood schools with half truths packaged to look convenient. The second keeps good books away from the classrooms where they are needed. We need to bridge the gap.

]]>http://blogs.slj.com/nonfictionmatters/2012/05/11/the-famous-appendix-b-exemplars-and-short-texts/feed/2New Ideas From the Fronthttp://blogs.slj.com/nonfictionmatters/2012/05/09/new-ideas-from-the-front/
http://blogs.slj.com/nonfictionmatters/2012/05/09/new-ideas-from-the-front/#commentsWed, 09 May 2012 11:01:49 +0000http://blogs.slj.com/nonfictionmatters/?p=1434Some months ago I posted here about a conversation I had with my doctoral adviser and his efforts to broaden the horizons of Ph.D. students past the academy. That discussion led to the interview that sparked this article in the Chronicle of Higher Education: “Teaching Ph.D.’s How to Reach Out” http://chronicle.com/article/Teaching-PhDs-How-to-Reach/131776/ I’m sharing it here because Dr. Cassuto makes a point that we should be thinking about. Speaking from the academy, he says they spend too little time (or no time) thinking about K-12 education, even though those students are their future. But, in turn, what links do we as authors, artists, designers, editors, reviewers, librarians, teachers, have with them? Sure teachers go to Ed School and librarians have their Masters. But I mean ongoing contact — from the forefronts of thinking and knowledge to the classroom?

As authors we make individual contacts — we email professor X whose work on whatever we are researching is fascinating, hoping for an extra touch of personal observation to add texture to our books. And of course many of us trawl the Science Times and other publications for the latest discovery that might make a good subject for a book. But that is not what I mean. The academy, I have come to learn now that I am at Rutgers, is built on research; research runs on grants. That means every department is filled with smart people with specialized knowledge thinking up new ways of gaining knowledge, new insights, new theories, new modes of measurement. The buzz of intellectual activity and informed creativity is ongoing, even as we all think about how to excite students about knowledge, about history, math, science. How can we connect the two — there are shows like Mythbusters that are a kind of popular culture Reality TV version of science, and Bill Nye, and History Channel. But that is just one strand.

What if there were some forum, the Davos of Education, where academics and K-12 folks would meet and swap ideas and experiences. No agenda, no conference papers, no forms to fill out. Just meet, talk, learn, and build connections. In the article I suggest that grad students take a class in Communication, but what if all of us needed to take a class, every few years, in New Ideas from the Front? The Teaching American History program, which Congress killed in budget cuts, was a version of this for American History. Is there an expanded version of that which we could recreate — maybe online to save cost? Ideas?